General Questions

What is SafeAssign and how does it work?

SafeAssign is a plagiarism prevention service offered by Blackboard. SafeAssign is a useful tool in educating students about plagiarism and the importance of proper citation for borrowed content.

Papers submitted to SafeAssign are compared against several databases to identify areas of overlap between the submission and existing works. In Blackboard, you can use SafeAssign in two ways.

SafeAssign in Assignments

SafeAssign is integrated into regular Blackboard Assignments so almost all of the regular Assignment features are available with the SafeAssign service.

Students submit papers to an Assignment with SafeAssign plagiarism checking enabled. The papers are then checked against the SafeAssign databases and delivered, along with a corresponding Originality Report, to instructors in Blackboard. Instructors can choose to make these reports viewable to students.

Direct Submit

Instructors and TAs may also choose to check papers without student involvement using SafeAssign Direct Submit. Upload one file at a time or a .zip file with many papers and view the matching report, which is not shared with students.

Why did a student receive an error when submitting?

Cookies must be enabled in the browser before submitting to SafeAssign. If they are not, students will receive an error indicating they are not logged in, the session has timed out, or do not have appropriate privileges.

Those experiencing issues should follow the instructions to enable third-party cookies in their browser.

Still can’t submit? Instruct students to remove all special characters (“, #, @, %, &, etc.) and spaces from the file name before submitting. Contact the Instructional Technology Lab for additional assistance.

What databases does SafeAssign currently use for plagiarism checking?

What is the Institutional Database?

This is the archive of papers submitted by students in your institution. Papers are automatically added to this database upon submission, stored, and used to check against other papers submitted from that institution.

Each institution's Institutional Database is kept separate from that of other institutions. It is also completely separate from the Global Reference Databases, which extends across institutions and to which students must volunteer their papers.

Can I receive an Originality Report without submitting a paper to the Institutional Database?

Yes, when creating a SafeAssignment you can choose to Exclude submissions from the Institutional and Global References Databases in the Submission Details section. In this case, the paper is not submitted to the Institutional Database, but a SafeAssign Originality Report is still generated.

SafeAssign Reports

How long does SafeAssign take to generate a report?

The SafeAssign service is run and hosted by Blackboard. Typically, the service returns SafeAssign reports within a few minutes, but during busy periods it may take several hours for reports to appear in Blackboard.

SafeAssign may include correctly cited quotations and information in the report if they are found in previously submitted papers. Therefore, instructors should carefully check each report to determine if the matches are properly cited and if plagiarism has occurred.

It is key to remember that SafeAssign is an informative tool that does not replace instructor experience and discernment. It is the instructor who will determine if plagiarism has occurred and which next steps are required.

Is SafeAssign ever wrong?

No. However, SafeAssign does not state whether a paper is plagiarized, but only identifies content in a paper that matches content from another source. It is up to the instructor and ultimately the academic department to determine if plagiarism has occurred.